Microsoft Outlines Xbox Achievements ahead of E3

Mike Nichols (CMO for Gaming at Microsoft)wrote yesterday about the Records setting road to E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) for Xbox.

Here is the summary of the post.

New records – Xbox is seeing record number of players, playing at record levels and engaging in new ways. There is 13% increase over last year in Xbox Live players and 15% more sales over last year for Xbox One. More than 600,000 friendships are forges with “Looking for Group” feature and there are now more than 1.2 million Clubs on Xbox Live.

Sea of Thieves – Is the fastest selling Microsoft Studios IP or Intellectual Property of this generation.

Playing milestones – Players now play over 4 billion hours on games released through ID@Xbox program and about 1 billion hours on games with backward compatibility library.

Games Pass – No hard numbers here, but Mike writes,

Xbox Game Pass has been a great contributor to growth in players and engagement. With over 100 great games available for one low monthly price and new games added every month, including new games from Microsoft Studios the same day as their global release, Xbox Game Pass is all about introducing you to new genres, franchises, and games. It’s been incredible to see the growth in the service and the growth of engagement in franchises made available in Xbox Game Pass.

Games Pass will also see the global release of State of Decay 2 on May 22nd. This is big, as seen in the past, Xbox Game Pass had titles which were same year release or earlier. But Microsoft announced sometime last year that Microsoft Studio new and upcoming games will be released together with Game Pass and more traditional way, like digitally and physical discs. So State of Decay 2 will be available to play on Game Pass on day 1 of its release.

Mixer – For the first time Mixer exceeded more than 10 million active users in a month as of late last year.

Mike concludes his post writing,

It’s a great time to be a gamer and to be a part of Team Xbox. We’re hard at work on exciting plans for E3, from what will be a great briefing filled with new games to the fan experience at the Microsoft Theater. This is our biggest E3 yet, and we look forward to a great week for gamers. Again, thank you to the amazing Xbox community.